Fouts appointee warned he'd sue

A former Warren city employee suing the municipality and Mayor James Fouts in a whistle-blower lawsuit warned the mayor that legal action was imminent.

Ex-administrative supervisor and efficiency analyst James Hartley secretly recorded two phone conversations he had with Fouts — his boss — in April and gave a copy of those recordings to Michigan State Police.

In the taped, profanity-laced tirades, Fouts blamed Warren’s former communications director, Joe Munem, and ex-assistant city attorney Jeffrey Schroder for some of his political struggles. After a State Police investigation, the Macomb County Prosecutor’s Office said in May that the mayor’s actions broke no laws, in part because Munem and Schroder were not parties to the phone conversations.

In a letter to the mayor dated June 17, 2013 — his last day on the job — Hartley claimed he had essentially been separated from his job and urged Fouts to have an attorney preserve any of his employment records.

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In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Macomb Daily through a Freedom of Information Act request, Hartley also claimed he was stripped of his normal job duties, blocked from his office, that his email was removed and that he was assigned to count auto parts by hand.

“Apparently, you must believe that this waste of taxpayer money to keep me on the payroll insulates you from claims that you retaliated against me, while serving your purposes of removing me from a position of responsibility,” Hartley said. “In fact, your actions are naked retaliation and amount to a constructive termination. I will be pursuing my remedies in court…”

Hartley informed Fouts that unused vacation days, compensatory time, a “floating holiday” and bonus time would keep him on the payroll to Aug. 14. The former city administrator also requested a copy of his personnel file.

Hartley filed his lawsuit against Warren and Fouts in U.S. District Court on July 19, claiming the alleged retaliation amounted to “constructive termination.”

In addition to his claim under Michigan’s Whistleblower Protection Act, Hartley alleges violation of his constitutional rights of free speech, freedom of association and freedom to petition the government.

He seeks unspecified compensatory and exemplary monetary damages, and a return — without retaliation — to the $66,933 job.

A phone message left for Hartley on Thursday was not immediately returned.

Reached at his office, Fouts told The Macomb Daily the lawsuit surprised him.

“I was shocked he sued because there was no intent to fire him,” the mayor said. “I was happy to keep him on board and keep him working. I was exonerated by police, and we moved on.

“As far as I’m concerned, he could’ve still been working here today.”

Hartley’s immediate supervisor, Public Safety Director Richard Sabaugh, said the former data-driven efficiencies coordinator was never restricted from his own office at Warren City Hall, but was not allowed into other divisions, such as the building and engineering departments.

Sabaugh, one of Fouts’ key administrators and advisers, said Hartley indeed was blocked from his own email for a day or two for a brash and inaccurate message to the City Council that a plan to outsource the city’s payroll operation had been scuttled.

“You could call it a slap on the wrist,” Sabaugh said.

The public service director scoffed at Hartley’s claim that he was assigned the menial task of counting parts by hand.

“That part is totally fabricated,” Sabaugh said. “The bigger issue was to computerize it so we could track it and prevent theft and losses.”